My parents moved when I was three to a gentleman's farm 20 miles out of New York City in North Caldwell, New Jersey. We were not the gentlefolk. The farm belonged to a retired textile manufacturer and millionaire named Joshua Dickinson Armitage. It was a big farm, about 450 acres. It had been largely constructed by Mr Armitage, so as to be a perfect gentleman's farm and a perfect reproof to those in England who had snubbed him for being in trade. He became a country gentleman, a squire. The reason we ended up on his property was that there was an old pre-revolutionary stone house there and when Mr Armitage met my father on some golf course or other and took to him, he had a Maecenas urge and suggested to my father that he move out to North Caldwell, New Jersey and inhabit that house for a very low rental. And so that's where my mother and father went and I with them, and it's where they stayed for 50 years.

Acclaimed US poet Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) published many books and was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He was less well known for creating a musical version of Voltaire's “Candide” with Bernstein and Hellman which is still produced throughout the world today.

David Sofield is the Samuel Williston Professor of English at Amherst College, where he has taught the reading and writing of poetry since 1965. He is the co-editor and a contributor to Under Criticism (1998) and the author of a book of poems, Light Disguise (2003).